Who knew trying to build a virtual chair could lead to questions of self-worth?

Dwarf Fortress is one of the most complex computer games in the history of computer games. How complex? In the game's discussion forum, one player asserts that after 120 failed games, he can finally "get into the swing of things." One of his many fortress death spirals began, as the downfalls of society often do, with an immigrant dwarf who suddenly succumbed to a "secretive mood." A short time later—kaboom.

First devised by its two obsessive creators in 2002, Dwarf Fortress involves taking a band of dwarves and building them into a miniature civilization. This includes all the implied strategy and resource management: assigning jobs, collecting and storing goods, building and using structures, and eventually defending yourself against other civilizations. In a profile of the game’s co-creators, the New York Timesdescribed Dwarf Fortress as “a series of staggeringly elaborate challenges and devastating setbacks.”

Not only is the game complex, with endless intricacies to the controls and systems, but it’s incredibly archaic-looking, especially for a game released this millennium. Its cast and environments are all rendered in colored characters of ASCII symbols (apostrophes, letters, mathematical symbols). It’s a puzzle constructed in code, a throwback to games like Kroz. Calling it Dwarf Fortress is almost misleading at first—you won't see anything resembling a traditional dwarf here.

While I implicitly understood Dwarf Fortress to be difficult, I couldn't imagine why it was said to be so hard. It seemed counterintuitive to make a game so obtuse it might actually drive people away unless the developers at Bay 12 Games were the Pai Meis of game design, accepting only the most dedicated/masochistic of players. I’ve played complex simulation and management games before (Civilization, SimCity). I’ve won some endeavors and lost others, but the general structure, strategy, and type of thinking involved with these titles has always appealed to me. Could another simulation seriously be that much more difficult to understand than the ones I already knew?

Enlarge/ It's possible to see the game rendered in a slightly less impenetrable art style, but our trial was run in the full glory of representative ASCII character art.

There are rewards to playing a game like Dwarf Fortress: from reading the forums and articles about the game, it's clear that once you have a grasp of the mechanics, the wide-open nature of the game gives you flexibility to do more or less whatever you want. Similar to Dungeons and Dragons, once you overcome the technical execution hurdles, the only remaining major limitation is your imagination. In one account from a now-defunct site, a player builds a coliseum for holding gladiatorial goblin fights to the amusement of the kingdom's rulers; at RockPaperShotgun, one player imagines a deep history for a quiver that is used to fell a clutch of demons, and once its owner dies, the quiver kills every new dwarf that tries to claim ownership.

I decided to give the game ten hours of my life. I set a goal of doing my legit best to avoid using external guides or hints and to hold off using internal explanations unless I felt lost. I’d experiment and explore, seeing what I could ascertain from the user interface and environment and making as much progress as I could by my wits alone. And I learned one thing well: Dwarf Fortress is not a game that will hold your hand.

Disclaimer: Graphical skins and other such add-ons can make the game more palatable, but for the purposes of this piece, I attempted to play it in its original, stripped-down state. There are instructions within the game, and without in the form of wikis and forums, but I wanted to begin at the most basic level, if only to come at the game from a recently trendy (if controversial) design paradigm on discoverability that's flowed from mobile apps to many new indie games: "if you see a UI walkthrough, they blew it". This is admittedly extreme, but I wanted to begin at the bottom to let the game be its most challenging, and then work up from there.

Our hero awakens in unfamiliar typographical surroundings

As my first playthrough begins, I find that I can move around the screen, but I’m not sure to what end. As far as I can see, I’m moving from one obscure symbol to the next. Playing this game is, visually, not entirely unlike reading a quantum physics textbook. I spot some square root signs in the “distance.”

My HUD, so to speak, would have me believe they are the “badlands.” Here there are no trees or vegetation but the surroundings are “mirthful." It’s not clear what they’ve done to deserve that adjective, but it’s a morale high point, so far.

Options have opened up to “embark” or “find desired location.” I embark, and the game warns me to prepare carefully for the journey to “Atêkirth." Possessing little knowledge of what that place is, how I will get there, or what I’ll find upon arriving, I steel my nerves for the worst.

This represents a world, I gather.

Doesn't this look... lovely... ?

Apparently “embark” means “cease movement around the map of Greek symbols,” because now the game is telling me that seven companions and I are here to make an outpost for “the glory of all Kêshshaksem.” The game tells me I have no supplies and it’s Spring now, but I need to get my sustenance act together “before winter entombs me.” Someone’s been reading too much Game of Thrones.

Now the map is punctuation marks, with a few happy faces scattered around. Ah, I think I get it—I chose a location to dig a hole in the ground, and now, having dug a hole in the ground, I have a Dwarf Fortress. So far the only narrative instructions in the game that I’ve gotten so far are the two words in the title.

A collective of dwarves, in what I will eventually come to realize are sinister surroundings.

I now have an overwhelming number of options for modifying my fortress and directing my dwarf peons. Looking at my list of residents, I see a couple of woodworkers, a couple who mainly deal with fish, and an “expedition leader.” Since our expedition has just ended, I make a mental note to eat him first if our winter preparations go awry.

I lose focus and manage to send a text message to my brother about a pregnant, mutual friend and send pictures of Claire Dane’s crying face to my boyfriend. I start cleaning my keyboard with a piece of sticky-tack before I remember my one true purpose: build my fortress, with dwarves. (I think.)

Enlarge/ A fan drawing of a dwarf (affectionately referred to as "dorfs" by the fan base).

I realize I have an option for a military and worry that things could get serious. I further doubt the utility of an expedition leader in this game. Then I stumble into a menu where I can see the relationships my dwarves have with others. The expedition leader worships two gods but is only long-term acquaintances with his fellow dwarves. Now I worry he’s not only useless, but possibly a vigilante who may be plotting my death. I discover somewhere in the menus that I have a wagon.

The only apparent action I can take is to make a burrow. I accidentally create two burrows in immediate succession. I find out I can put dwarves in them. In goes the expedition leader. Live burial.

While I was moving my smiley face icon around the screen before, I can’t seem get it to do it again. I want to put burrows everywhere and put dwarves in them because that suddenly feels like enormous progress in this game. Stockholm syndrome is swift and unforgiving.

The game has been paused this whole time, so I decide to let it run to see what happens. Happy faces, d’s, W’s, and c’s mill around on the screen. I let them run for a few minutes and then check various menus to see if there have been any fruits of the labor that may or may not have happened, theoretically represented by the busy icons moving around on the screen. I can’t find anything. My dwarves may be, for all I know, dying in slow and very low-resolution motion. Time to read some instructions.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston